To get the bike running originally, I bought a super lightweight (in fact “Anti-gravity”) battery. In this picture you can see the starter motor that died.
As wonderfully lightweight as that battery was, it didn’t accept a charge, and died completely (perhaps it went out in sympathy with the starter?). I had bought it from Northside Motorcycles and they were great – they fully refunded, and sold me a more traditional battery.
When I had the bike offline for a couple of years, that traditional RoadStar battery also kicked the bucket. I guess I should have kept it topped with water/acid and maybe even charged it a couple of times. Oh well. It weighed a ton, and had to be mounted upright.
When I repositioned and reworked all the electrics leter on, I bought a Motobatt glass mat unit.
“Maintenance free, never needs water, install-and-go” according to the words boldly printed on its resplendent sealed yellow casing.
It isn’t small, it isn’t big, and it can be mounted on its side under the seat. Perfect.
I crafted a simple battery holder using galvanised strap iron – pop riveted to the seat mount, and designed to hang in place over the frame. No frame modification, so I’m clean with the design rules. A couple of coats of etch primer, then gloss black.
The battery is now held in place by a combination of inertia, the electric cables, some wishful thinking, and a block of foam under the seat.
I painted the “bottom half” of the battery with black gloss so that it would not be so obvious, and all is well.
Apart from receiving a couple of dents when the seat was too close, this setup has worked fine for months.
Davo's Weekend Workshop 